Through the past darkly: Reflections on UFC 157

Through the past darkly: Reflections on UFC 157

It couldn’t have gone any better if Dana White had scripted it himself.

The first women’s fight in UFC history did everything it was supposed to at UFC 157 in Anaheim, Calif., on Saturday night, and none of what we hoped it could avoid. It was competitive without being controversial, and decisive without being unnecessarily brutal. It gave us a chance to see UFC women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey fight through some early trouble, but also another opportunity to see the champ get her armbar on. It brought the mainstream media attention that most UFC events don’t get within smelling distance of, and somehow almost all of those outlets managed to appreciate what they saw without freaking out over the fact that two women were fighting inside a cage for money.

No excessive blood or exploding cauliflower ear or weird stoppages or wardrobe malfunctions (though we did get close, thanks to Rousey’s official UFC sports bra). Just a good and fair and somewhat competitive fight. And, if we’re being totally honest, one where the right woman won.

Not that anyone from the UFC would admit it, but it doesn’t take a daytime TV psychic to tell that the bosses were banking on a Rousey victory. After Liz Carmouche hopped on her back and lashed her forearm across Rousey’s million-dollar smile, you know some heart rates shot up in the cageside seats. Carmouche was fine as a likable, capable opponent, but Rousey was the star here. Had she been upset by Carmouche, all those people who were tuning in to a UFC event for the first time – or even just following along from a distance via social media or online chatter – might have written this women’s MMA stuff off as more show than substance. I mean, we spend weeks hearing about this blonde superstar, and then she loses in the first round? Talk about being overhyped.

But it didn’t go down that way, and women’s MMA as a whole is better off for it. That’s because the division needs Rousey, at least for now.

Before the main event, I spoke with former Strikeforce champ Sarah Kaufman, who was in attendance at Honda Center along with a passel of other female fighters, about whether she thought the outcome of the Rousey-Carmouche fight mattered for the future of women’s MMA.

“At this point,” Kaufman said, “I think [the UFC] is committed enough to it that it’ll be fine either way.”

In other words, even if Carmouche pulled off the upset, the division wouldn’t evaporate on the spot. Instead, Kaufman said, the UFC would likely go for the immediate rematch option. The fact that no one even breathed the word “rematch” after Rousey won probably tells us something about our collective comfort level with the outcome. While a Carmouche victory wouldn’t have been disastrous, Rousey is the one who carried women’s MMA into the UFC. With this first win out of the way, she can carry it further still.

The good news is, unlike a Kimbo Slice or even a Gina Carano, Rousey doesn’t need to be propped up. She’s already faced some of the best 135-pounders in women’s MMA and she’s armbarred them all. Now the challenge is to find more credible contenders, which should come as a natural byproduct of building out the division as a whole (more on that later). The first step comes in April, when Miesha Tate faces Cat Zingano in a fight that will probably determine who’s next for Rousey.

As Tate told me following the UFC 157 post-fight news conference, which she watched from the media section, “I have to win that fight. I know what it sets up, because I see it right here.”

The No. 1 contender fight that wasn’t

Looking at Lyoto Machida and Dan Henderson at the post-fight presser, you couldn’t have guessed who the victor was. Neither looked especially damaged or especially happy, and they certainly didn’t get any more enthusiastic as they sat and listened to UFC President Dana White complain that neither one of them had done anything in the final three minutes of the fight.

“It wasn’t a barnburner,” White said at the press conference. “It wasn’t the most exciting fight you’ve ever seen. You won’t be writing stories about this fight until the end of time, but Lyoto won the fight. He beat the No. 1 contender. He beat Dan Henderson.”

But c’mon, reporters prodded White once the press conference had wrapped up. You’re really going to give Machida another title shot now? Based on that? Really?

Over and over again, White repeated it as plainly as he could. Machida beat the No. 1 contender, which makes him the No. 1 contender. Case closed. But for those of us who have been trying to pin down the UFC’s title shot formula lately, it was a little tough to swallow. Machida’s victory in a snoozer over Hendo might have edged him to the top of the list, but an irrefutable mandate for a title shot it was not. You’re telling me that if Alexander Gustafsson goes out and puts on a fantastic show against Gegard Mousasi in April, he doesn’t leapfrog Machida to the top of the division?

I mean, I guess you can tell me that if you want to. It doesn’t mean I’m going to believe it.

A timely stoppage saves some brain cells

As a dazed Josh Koscheck glanced up at referee Herb Dean moments after his bout with Robbie Lawler had been stopped, you knew the complaints were coming. If there’s one thing MMA fans hate, it’s being deprived of the chance to see a wounded fighter eat a few more punches as he attempts to battle back. When the fighter in question is Koscheck, maybe they just want to see him get hit in the face some more.

Two things here: 1) Koscheck seemed stunned and weirdly unresponsive even before Lawler unloaded him – so much so that it took Lawler a second to realize he was free to tee off without consequence, and 2) this is Robbie freaking Lawler we’re talking about here. When that guy gets a chance to land clean punches on you, you’re going to know it. Or, in Koscheck’s case, you’re going to know about after you see the replay and feel around for the new lumps on your head. Letting a slugger like Lawler run wild on your skull could have serious consequences, and very quickly. Koscheck was sleepwalking through that onslaught, offering no real defense for an attack that was only getting worse.

Dean was right to stop that when he did, and the MMA world should be glad to have Lawler back in the picture with the UFC. This sport is always just a little more interesting with that particular humorless bad-ass running around.

A note on women’s bantamweight contracts

At a fan Q&A on Friday, Dana White said the UFC had 10 female 135-pounders on the roster and intended to add five more. Thing is, we’d only heard of six at that point (Rousey, Carmouche, Tate, Zingano, Sara McMann and Alexis Davis). Then FOX Sports’ A.J. Perez tweeted that four new fighters had been added, including Sarah Kaufman, Julie Kedzie, Germaine de Randamie and Amanda Nunes.

When I saw Kedzie at the event and asked her if it was true that she’d signed with the UFC, she replied, “I guess?” Kedzie said she got the news from Perez’s tweet, just like the rest of us, but wasn’t totally certain what the deal was. A quick chat with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby, however, cleared the situation up a bit.

Turns out that these four new fighters weren’t so much “signed” to the UFC as they were absorbed. Zuffa already owns their contracts through the Strikeforce purchase, and now that Strikeforce is no more, well, that leaves those contracts as the sole property of the UFC. They didn’t ink new deals or even have much in the way of official talks with the UFC. They became UFC fighters more or less the moment Strikeforce died, but it wasn’t announced because none of them have dates or fights yet. That’s kind of the problem at the moment.

Remember White’s remark about the UFC being 100 fighters over capacity? That affects everyone, even those in the brand new women’s division. There just isn’t much room on upcoming fight cards, so the female 135-pounders might be in for a wait. That’s fine with Kedzie, who isn’t medically cleared to resume her full training regimen yet, and for Kaufman, who has a fight in Invicta in April. Kaufman said she had to get permission from Zuffa to take that bout, which takes place entirely outside the scope of her existing contract.

That also means, however, that should something happen to one of the four fighters who does have a bout scheduled in the UFC – and should the UFC matchmakers call Kaufman up as a replacement – she might have to ditch her Invicta bout in order to fulfill her UFC duties. But, Kaufman added, “Invicta knew that was the deal when they agreed to it.”

An easy call for “Fight of the Night”

Dennis Bermudez showed up backstage after his three-round war with Matt Grice sporting a face full of fresh cuts and bruises and a hand concealed by a giant ice pack. This was midway through UFC 157, but after what he’d just gone through to get the decision over Grice, he was feeling pretty good about his chances of pocketing some bonus money. He turned out to be right, even though he admitted he’d been nowhere near as certain that the decision was going to go his way.

“That’s the first time in my life I can say I didn’t know which way it was going to go,” said Bermudez, who got dropped several times early on in the fight, only to come back with a blistering third round that nearly put Grice away. “I remember about the third time I hit the floor thinking, ‘Man, we’ve still got like 10 more minutes of this. I don’t know if I’m going to last.’ But I just dug deep and told myself to calm down. I do have a pretty good poker face.”

Bermudez’s strategy paid off in the end, but he admitted there were moments in the third round that he couldn’t believe Grice was still standing. “I was teeing off, measuring him up and hitting him as hard as I could, following with three or four punches, and then he’d hook me. I’m like, where did that come from?”

As we all know now, it was coming from the game opponent who made it possible for Bermudez to earn that extra $50,000 in the first place. No one wins “Fight of the Night” on his own, after all.

Never again, vows “The Rock-n-Rolla”

Nah-Shon Burrell knew he was in the hot seat after missing weight by nearly five pounds. As he explained after his narrow decision win over Yuri Villefort in the night’s thrilling opening bout, he was close to 200 pounds when he got the offer to fight at UFC 157, and he miscalculated his weight cut early on.

“I tried to do everything I could, but my body just shut down,” Burrell said. “I prayed they’d take the fight and the UFC would let me fight, and they did. I’m happy. It’ll never happen again, though.”

The Strikeforce import has struggled with making weight in the past, but those are habits he’d better shed in a hurry with the UFC. He also might want to up his Twitter game.

As media members noted when Burrell came backstage for interviews, he’s a hard man to find on social media. His official Twitter handle is @Ttherocknrolla, which makes it seem like he misspelled his own nickname. At the time of the fight the profile included a background photo of a sports car and the initials “C.T.” to identity the account’s owner. It’s as if Burrell was actively trying to keep people from following him on Twitter, which might explain why he had just over 100 followers. But as Burrell explained, the extra T in the handle was because he’d already gone through several other Twitter accounts and was quickly running out of fresh ideas.

“What happened was somebody hacked my account and was sending weird messages to everybody, so I just shut down my last Twitter,” he said. “Hopefully this one will stay.”

When I pointed out to him that even his existing followers, who were congratulating him on his first UFC win after an exciting back-and-forth battle with Villefort, kept suggesting that he make it easier for people to find him, he just shrugged.

“I saw that, but I don’t know how to do that,” Burrell said. “I’m new at this.”

TORONTO – MMAjunkie is on scene and reporting live from today’s early and official UFC 206 fighter weigh-ins, which kick off at 9 a.m. ET (6 a.m. PT). Join us for a live video stream and official results.

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